New App! Feedback, survey, and beta users please :)

Quantified Self Apps & Tools
1

Hey guys!

I’ve been quantifying and tracking random variables in my life (eg sleep, happiness) for the last ten years or so and have yet to find an app that allows me to do this the way I like, so I decided to build one. There are already a lot of apps like this out there and I’m testing them out every day to get an idea of what I like and don’t like about them.

Here is my philosophy behind the app: I want something that is simple and can track anything. I want it to be minimally rigid, meaning the app doesn’t decide how or what to track. You do.

There are two apps that I’m drawing inspiration from outside of the quantified self movement:

Trello: I’m copying the philosophy behind Trello of creating just the right amount of simplicity and complexity. It can be used for just about anything, however you want. There is minimal rigidity in the data and user experience. If you can quantify it (most things can at least be put into a scale of 1-10), then you can track it.

Day One: I love the interface. It does exactly what it needs to do and nothing more. It’s not new: there are a million journaling apps out there, but they finally got it right. I would love to integrate my app with Day One at some point actually, so that you can combine quantitative logging with qualitative journaling.

I’ve built a grungy prototype as a proof of concept. If you are a Mac user, you can download and try it out: http://cjroth.github.io/lifetracker/

It’s not awesome (yet), but shit, it’s pretty decent for a start. Over the next months I’m planning on working on it as much as I can find the time to and make it perfect. I’m in the process of porting it to iOS and Android now too.

I am looking for a few initial power users to help me test and and give me feedback. I would also love it if you could take a few minutes to take this survey: http://goo.gl/forms/x8zzbDgUqU. I want to understand what sort of an app you want and how you plan to use it.

I’m particularly curious on what features you want to see, how you plan to use it, and how privacy and data ownership matter to you.

Chris

2

Looks super sleek! Have you considered building a web-based version, so you won’t have to maintain both Android and iOS code bases?

3

Thanks Dan!

Actually I’ve had a few people ask for that lately so that might be a good idea. I feel like I’d rather use an app on my phone myself, but if enough people want a web app then hell yeah I’ll build one :slight_smile:

One downside of a browser app is that it’s inherently less accountable as far as open source/privacy goes. What are your thoughts on that?

4

Looks nice; would love to hear about what correlations you found (or did not find)!

5

Thanks ejain!

Actually the screenshot at the top of the website is my real data based on about two weeks while I was living in NYC (I find that different cities actually create different habits and correlations eg walking vs driving).

I’ve found that groups of variables tend to correlate with each other:

  • Exercise, happiness, and social interaction correlate the most positively of any variables
  • Caffeine, sleep, and happiness positively correlate second most strongly
  • Dream intensity, quality of sleep, and amount of sleep correlate, and those OPPOSE stress
  • I drink more caffeine on days that I get more sleep (surprisingly!)
  • I am optimally productive, happy, and social on days that I get 7-9 hours of sleep. More or less than that and happiness and productivity decrease.
  • So far I haven’t found any correlations with libido at all, which is surprising.
6

it is a very interesting thing.

I would like to help you test. And I am a programmer，so I can help you develop.

7

Thanks @aptentity!

It’s open source now so you can fork it and send me pull requests. I would be excited to have you help :slight_smile:

8

Hi Chris, it would be great to see the results of that survey, for curiosity’s sake!

1 Like
9

Hi Chris, the interface is simple and sleek - good job! Just curious if you have the import feature working? I couldn’t find any file types that it would let me import. Just wanted to see how some already collected data looked on the app.